Get party elements out and reshuffle committee or galamsey fight won't work - Baako tells Akufo-Addo

The Managing Editor of the New Crusading Guide newspaper, Kweku Baako Jnr has reiterated calls for President Akufo-Addo to ‘get rid’ of party element if he wants to win the fight against galamsey.

He said the President’s efforts to fight galamsey will not successful until he removes those ‘party elements’.

”If there is a continued party, political involvement in any campaign to fight galamsey, it’s not going to work. When you have a president who dedicates and commits himself to that campaign and yet he’s hugely challenged in terms of implementation; I’m saying the party elements get them out; quickly” he said on Joy Newsfile programme.

Kweku Baako further asked the President to reconstitute the Inter-Ministerial Committee on illegal mining (IMCIM)

The committee which was constituted to oversee the implementation of the ban on all forms of small scale mining has recently come under heavy bashing following the missing of some excavators.

According to Kweku Baako, 'they have failed in a way’ in discharging their duties.

“This fight is not going to be an easy fight; some progress has been made but honestly generally at this third year, the challenge has been huge and I trace the source of the challenge from within. The inter-ministerial; if I were the President I will reconstitute it, I know he doesn’t like reshuffling… but I think they failed in a way, If I were the president I will reshuffle them, bring new elements in there; keep the institutional representation intact” he urged

Reports emerged that about 500 excavators have gone missing after they were seized by the Operation Vanguard team (an operational team made up of various security personnel purposely set up to clamp down on illegal mining).

Prof Frimpong-Boateng, the Chairperson of the IMCIM, who announced that the excavators had vanished subsequently issued a letter directing the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to arrest and interrogate embattled Horace Ekow Ewusi, after learning that he reportedly sold some of the confiscated items from illegal miners.

Subsequently, a video emerged on social media indicating how the Committee reportedly engage with some party folks on some mining concessions in order to raise money from the illegal activities to support the New Patriotic Party (NPP).